Cari and I just spent a wonderful, near-perfect week in Hawaii. We were on Maui. It was the first time for both of us to visit any Hawaiian island. We were there to celebrate our 20th anniversary (which actually doesn’t happen until November, but decided to travel now for several reasons that aren’t worth mentioning).
We put together what turned out to be a pretty darn good plan of attack to get the most out of our week on the island — seeing and doing a lot of really fun and amazing things that I’ll document in future posts.
For now, I just want to quickly share and recommend two terrific resources for planning a trip to Hawaii. We relied very heavily on both of these and there’s no doubt that our trip was much better because of them. If you’re headed to Hawaii, these may be all you need.
This is a wonderful web site and blog that offers information about all of the Hawaiian islands. But we just relied on it for some extremely helpful Maui tips that I don’t think we could’ve found anywhere else. Take this post, for example, about relying on Avis car rental to avoid getting a cockroach-infested car. Can you imagine the nightmare of finding roaches crawling in your car? We used Avis and had no problems at all. This older post detailing what to pack for Hawaii was also a big help, especially because it convinced me to go buy a second swimsuit just for the trip … and I shudder to think about only having brought one.
This is a terrific guidebook that, like GoVisitHawaii.com, doesn’t pull any punches with its recommendations. We relied on the book to help us choose activities (like which Molokini snorkeling boat is the best and what sights to stop for on the Road to Hana), restaurants and much more. It also has an accompanying iPhone app which is basically an electronic version of the book. Both the book and app are highly recommended if you’re headed to Maui. And there are “sister” books for a couple of the other islands, too.
So there you go. Headed to Hawaii? These two resources should be about all you need to plan the perfect trip. They sure worked wonders for us!
5 Comments
Glad you guys had such a great trip. Happy anniversary!!
Matt– thank you so very much for all your kind words! I’m thrilled that you found Go Visit Hawaii a help for your Maui trip planning. My goal is to help people make the most of their Hawaii vacations. So, I love it when a plan comes together. 🙂
Mahalo nui loa,
Sheila
Thank YOU, Sheila – what a great resource you have there. Cari and I were thinking about starting GoVisitTahiti.com, but someone already beat us to the punch!
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